"The women of Bikini Kill let guitarist Billy Karren be in their feminist punk band, but only if he's willing to just "do some shit." Being a feminist dude is like that. We may ask you to "do some shit" for the band, but you don't get to be Kathleen Hannah."--@heatherurehere

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Men in Feminist Spaces

“Men
who want to be feminists do not need to be given a space in feminism.
They need to take the space they have in society & make it
feminist.”

—Kelley Temple, National Union of Students UK Women’s Officer

Here's a quote that's been floating around various online spheres of mine--it's one that I love, but at the same time, it also shows the limits of slogans (even good slogans). Inasmuch as it addresses the persistent problem of feminist men barging in and attempting to take over feminist spaces to various degrees, it's fantastic. And as a beginning of a plan for feminist men, "go out and make the spaces you're already in feminist" is quite a fine start. It was partly in that spirit that I originally started this blog--while I had recognized that men would often take over comments sections of various feminist posts ("what about the menz!?!!1!"), I also recognized that some of the stuff that men were bringing up in comments were legitimate issues that just weren't being brought up in the right context. I wanted Feminist Allies to provide some of that context, to provide a place where men who were feminists could talk about feminist movement, including their concerns about their place(s) within feminism.

Thing is, "go out and make your spaces feminist" can only be the start of what feminist men can (and ought) to go out and do--it can't be the start and end of what we can do. Imagining that men can do feminist work without having a community backing them up, that men can do feminist work without support from other men, women, and folks of all genders, is to partly buy in to the notion of traditional masculinity, buying in to the notion of hyper-individuality which is really specifically harmful to men, even though it of course affects folks of all genders. Feminist men don't "deserve" a place in all feminist spaces. But there have to be some feminist spaces that men are allowed into; even if the majority of those spaces are created and maintained by other feminist men, I suspect that there is a real, necessary need for some feminist spaces created and maintained by women to make some space for feminist men. Luckily, there are lots of such spaces, actually, which is why I can still embrace the above slogan, even though I think it's way more complex than it implies. I think bell hooks has it right, in The Will to Change:

"Women and men alike in our culture spend very little time encouraging
males to learn to love. Even the women who are pissed off at men, women
most of whom are not and maybe never will be feminist, use their anger
to avoid being truly committed to helping to create a world where males
of all ages can know love. And there remains a small strain of feminist
thinkers who feel strongly that they have given all they want to give
to men; they are concerned solely with improving the collective welfare
of women. Yet life has shown me that any time a single male dares to
transgress patriarchal boundaries in order to love, the lives of women,
men and children are fundamentally changed for the better."(pp10)

I also think that the love that men need includes some open space in feminist communities, at least some of the time.